Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  She smiled faintly at the command in his rough voice and nodded, touching his lips with her fingertips. He kissed them and issued more commands.

  “Whatever they do to you, as long as you live to breathe in my arms again, that is all I will ever desire.”

  “I’ll live for you, beloved,” she whispered, and with an anguished, animal cry and one last awful, awkward kiss through the bars, he was gone.

  Coming Home to Good-bye

  AYLAN WOULD make the trip between Clough and Eiran under the Hammer many more times in his life, but none of them would have the terror of that first time.

  There were torches at intervals, kept bright for the last wave of men come from Eiran to join the fight. There was even food and water at every torch station, and Aylan would later wonder at the impulse the Eirans had to leave succor for each other at every opportunity. So there was food, and there was light, but in the few words they ever shared about that journey, both Aylan and Starren would admit there was precious little comfort.

  They had ridden hard—more than hard. They had ridden until the stout-gammed Heartland was puffing and blowing by the time they reached the entrance of the tunnel. They walked him and rested when they could, but the unrelenting darkness had made time irrelevant, and it was such a terrible, groundless feeling that man, girl, and horse had all walked past weariness to get clear of it.

  By the time they saw the glow down the tunnel that indicated home was less than a half day away, they were periodically stumbling with exhaustion. They had made a four-day journey in less than three.

  Lane would tell him later that he was weeping when Heartland stumbled to a halt in front of the dear, crowded Moon home, but Aylan wouldn’t remember that.

  He remembered Lane’s arms around them both, and the lovely, blissful weightlessness of having his father, the only real father he’d known, welcome him home.

  He also remembered Lane’s first words. “Great Goddess—whose blood is that?”

  Nearly four days, and neither of them had stopped to wash.

  Aylan certainly remembered his fury, his impotent, bitter fury, as the story had tumbled out of the both of them when they were stripping in the mudroom.

  Lane was listening in his usual kind way when Roes waddled in with clothes for them and to hear the story with strained eyes.

  “Holy Goddess, Roes!” Aylan snapped out of his anguish to find his soul filled with something sweet instead of bitter for a moment. “Are you and Yarri having some sort of contest?”

  Roes’s shy delight seemed even brighter than the sunlight after the three days underground. “Aldam’s child,” she murmured, rubbing her belly absently. Aylan reached out and hugged her and felt her hot cheek on his bare shoulder. “We’re going to name her after Mum.”

  Aylan backed up and looked at Lane then, his eyes asking the question he had been afraid to voice since they’d arrived.

  “She’ll be disappointed,” Lane said shakily, “that Torrant and Yarri weren’t able to make it home in time.”

  Aylan nodded, seeing all the truth he needed in Lane’s suddenly aged face, the gray that had taken over his beard, the lines etched at his eyes. “Well, then, let us clean up and give her all the news of them, shall we?” he said gamely, and Lane smiled, glad that Aylan understood.

  “Of course. She’ll be thrilled to see you both.”

  “Da?” Starren’s voice trembled, and Lane turned toward her with his arms open for his baby girl alone. “I made her sicker, Da, didn’t I?”

  “Shhh…. No, baby. It just got worse fast. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry, just go in and talk to her. I swear, she’ll be glad to see you.” Lane’s eyes met Aylan’s over Starren’s head, and Aylan had one more lie to add to his ever-growing list of truths that would never be told.

  Of course the worry had made Bethen worse.

  If Aylan hadn’t known who was sitting in Bethen’s customary chair, dozing with some incredibly ugly knitting in her hands, he would have mistaken her for somebody else.

  Her hair had thinned, and her skin had shrunk up to outline the bones of her face. Lines of pain had grooved themselves over laugh lines, and the corners of her mouth seemed to turn downward now instead of up. She was covered in blankets, but even those couldn’t hide the lumps under the skin of her arms and her shoulders where no lumps should exist. But when Aylan and Starren entered the room, accompanied by Starren’s hesitant “Mama?”, Bethen smiled brilliantly and held out her arms.

  “Come here,” she rasped weakly. “Oh, my babies, I’m so glad you made it home!”

  Aylan found himself wrapped in her arms next to Starren and, once again, an awe-filled blissful feeling of weightlessness singing to his heart of home. He found himself humbled and cared for and not regretting for a moment that Bethen took this one, last moment to take all his burdens from him and make him feel loved.

  He thought he would cry, but he had cried too many bitter tears when he’d left Torrant. Besides, a body wouldn’t let you grieve and howl for hours on end. Eventually it would insist that there was dinner to be had, and the mind allowed itself to be distracted by simple things. Small jokes get made, moments lightened, because there must be living in the midst of dying, or life wouldn’t be precious enough to miss.

  “You know,” Aylan said, his voice passably steady after he’d sat down on the ottoman across from Bethen and Roes brought him some much-appreciated stew, “Yarri is pregnant too.”

  Bethen smiled, a wearier smile than the one she’d given him and Starren as they entered, but grateful nonetheless. “That’s wonderful,” she croaked. “Roes—you and Yarri can raise your children together.” She turned to Aylan and refrained from saying the obvious—that she had always wanted to see her grandchildren. She said instead, “I made some baby shawls for you and Starren. I thought I’d chosen the color of your eyes, my boy, but your eyes are so much prettier in person.”

  Aylan took her hand and kissed it. “Well, you know your every smile lives on in Starren,” he said with a game smile, and Bethen returned it delightedly.

  “My beautiful children,” she murmured, and her knitting, that had been brought up to her chest for a moment, fell down quietly to her lap. Her eyes closed, and her labored breath slowed in sleep, just that quickly.

  Starren put down her bowl of stew and picked up the almost completed sock in her mother’s hand.

  “It’s really revolting, Cwyn,” she said to her brother, who hadn’t stopped hugging her since he came back from bedding down the horse.

  “Thank you, little sister,” Cwyn replied dryly, but he didn’t take his arms from around her shoulders. “I tried everything I could think of.” His voice dropped. “It didn’t work—that’s only the first one, and I don’t think she’s going to be able to finish it.”

  Starren swallowed and patted her brother’s hands with her free hand. “It’s all right, Terror,” she said hoarsely. “I’ll finish it. I might mess up the second one, but I can try….”

  “Absolutely,” Cwyn agreed, leaning his cheek against her still-damp hair. “I’d really appreciate that.”

  But Starren didn’t move to start knitting right away, and Roes came in behind them and sat heavily down next to Stanny and Evya on the nearby couch. Lane was sitting on the arm of Bethen’s chair, stroking the once-vibrant hair away from his beloved’s eyes.

  Together they all sat, for just a moment, and listened to her breathing. It was very apparent that the sound might not continue through the night.

  The Shore at Stars’ Dark

  TORRANT THRASHED around on the plain, sweat-soaked linens and moaned Bethen’s name. Yarri put down her knitting, sponged some water on his blistering forehead, and murmured his name—his true name—in a broken voice.

  “Beloved, calm down. You’ll rip your wounds loose again—Aldam just healed you.”

  Aldam, in fact, could probably not heal Torrant again in the next few hours without risking his own life. Yarri seriously thought the onl
y thing keeping him from doing it anyway was the thought of Roes, alone, with his daughter in her womb.

  In fact, she was pretty sure that same sort of thought was the only thing keeping her beloved tethered to the earth at all.

  Aldam had said it would be close. Yarri just didn’t realize how violent Torrant’s fight to live would really be.

  He thrashed again, this time calling her name, and she hefted herself up and put her cheek next to his, whispering in his ear, “I’m here, beloved. I’ve always been here.”

  Her voice calmed him down—which was the only thing in the last four days that was reassuring in the least.

  Torrant’s breathing evened out, and she sat back down heavily. She had not truly begun to show, but her waist had thickened, and her bottom felt as though it had broadened like a flatiron in the last two weeks. She was tired, dammit, so she was not light on her swollen feet these days.

  As she resumed her knitting, her eyes wandered around the dusk-darkened little room—mostly to keep from searching the face of the man she loved, looking for vestiges of their shared childhood. As she’d tended him for the last four days, she would hear a snatch of a song from his roughened throat or see the lines in his face relax with the sound of her voice, and for haunting moments she could believe they were both as young as they had been last year, or three months ago, and that his heart was still strong enough to pull him through the fever his wound had brought.

  It wasn’t as though his heart hadn’t been taking a valiant stand in the battle already.

  At least she knew that when she was looking at the room, she wouldn’t find a single familiar thing to wound her hopes. Whatever her hazy recollections of their childhood home contained, these two small, one-floor houses with their many small bedrooms built around a hub of a kitchen were not among them.

  She liked looking at the room—Aldam excelled at woodwork, and he and Roes had been trapped in this particular house for much of their stay. Little things, such as the elegantly shaped moldings along the floor and the edges of the walls or shelves with beveling and vaguely flower-shaped carvings, made the room pleasant and special. The chill fresh air of early spring was coming in through a window shutter that had been hand carved and decorated in a similar way. There had been no panes of glass for the windows, but the fact that Aldam made sure every room had a shutter and a way to look outside spoke volumes about both the man and the hope he and Roes had brought to the refugees at Moon Hold.

  Even the bedframe was a marvel of elegant simplicity, with an embossed rose as the headboard centerpiece and vine tendrils etched all along the edges.

  Aldam had done everything he could to make a pretty place for his Roes, even if it was only for their first winter together.

  The recycled wood, carved and whittled and sanded, contained love and hope and joy, and since Torrant’s face, often contorted in agony or battle rage, had none of these things, there were times when Yarri preferred to look at the room and hope.

  Every now and then, when his breath rattled in his chest and he seemed at his absolute weakest, a terrible feline yrowwwlllll would burst from his throat, and when he opened his eyes, they would be Goddess blue.

  Aldam said it was a good thing. He said that if Torrant got strong enough to call the cat, he’d be strong enough to heal and make it stay, but all Yarri could think was that it wasn’t fair. All those years ago, he had called the cat to save their lives, and now, now that they were old enough to have a life of their own, it seemed as though answering to that thing had almost killed him.

  It wasn’t a fair feeling. It wasn’t rational, but when you had been watching your beloved fight for his life for four days, rational didn’t always have a say, now did it?

  Yarri heard a noise outside and looked up.

  Aldam hadn’t been her only visitor. Torrell had visited with herbed soups for Torrant and bread and cheese for her. Arue and Iain had slept at Torrant’s feet sometimes. It seemed like a habit for them, and she had been too grateful for their silent, kitten-footed company to object. Zhane had come in and sat with her, and they had spoken of Eljean and how proud Zhane had been that his darling, spoiled regent had become such a man of honor.

  Fredy had come in not long ago and nodded to the others in the room, and they all left hastily.

  Something was happening—something Yarri should be concerned about, but no one wanted to burden her with. Torrant would have found out, she thought to herself, knitting one of the last remaining balls of precious sock yarn from Bethen. She had saved the oddments from the skeins and thought maybe there would be enough for a blanket. The fact that she allowed her mind to wander to making a blanket for the heartbeats in her belly made her more certain than ever that she was a less than worthy mate for the man who lay in the bed at her side.

  There was a sudden clatter and shouting from outside. Yarri looked up through the shutter in time to see a contingent of men in the dreaded livery riding up the path to her father’s home.

  Her hands froze, and so did her heart, in panic so severe it made her joints ache, then Torrant took a horrendous gasp and cried out, “Bethen! Eljean! Oh Goddess, please!”

  His eyes shot open, hazel, clear-sighted, but seeing something beyond her weary and terrified face, beyond the little room with its cheerful moldings, even beyond the pristine blue spring, twilight sky. He let out the breath on a shudder, blood coming with it, and Yarri looked outside, seeing the soldiers array themselves in front of the house and speak, hearing Aldam’s voice in reply. She held her hand to her mouth and bit down on her palm, hard, in absolute knowledge that Aldam couldn’t be called, not now, not when Torrant sat up and choked, calling for Bethen and Eljean again, screaming from a throat raw with abuse already.

  Yarri dropped her knitting and put both hands on his shoulders, forcing him down in bed, and heard, even over the sounds of the forced parlay outside, her own voice screaming at him, begging him, pleading…. Please, Torrant, please… please, come back to me, be what you have to, change if you have to, but, beloved, oh please, please, beloved, come back to me….

  ELJEAN HAD been screaming all day.

  They had started with ripping out chunks of his hair and then shoving exquisitely pointed, glowing-hot spikes under his fingernails, and he had gibbered like the puling rabbit he had always known himself to be.

  He had begged for Torrant.

  They moved on to other things, worse things, things he in particular had always dreaded, and in those scant moments when they let him recover, he had memories of his body being invaded by hot things and sharp things and obscene things. Cruel hands grabbed the edges of his wound and tore, then rubbed salt in it and ground it in, and he screamed and screamed until he wished the bastard who was screaming would stop shouting long enough for him to think.

  And they flogged him and hurt him, and they asked for Triane’s Son.

  And he begged for Torrant.

  Nobody, not even Consort Rath, knew who Torrant was.

  But still the agonies continued until he begged for death, welcomed death, prayed to pass out, and was often granted his wish.

  And then he heard Trieste scream and knew that he had failed, failed in the worst way, if they were doing to her what they were doing to him. Oh, oh Goddess, please let her survive. His body was too ravaged, too destroyed. He knew, even in the midst of the desecrations in pain, he knew he would not survive that latest violation, the ripping of skin at his middle, what his intestines were doing in the wake of the piece of heated iron that had been shoved inside him… but Trieste. Not Trieste, not Torrant’s Pretty Girl who had, with his beloved, tried to be mother and sister to them all.

  He sucked in a breath to scream and found that it left his chest without screaming. He breathed. The pain was still there, but his mad, animal panic at the pain was forced back, breath by breath… and in its wake, his mind stopped for a moment, and he cried out for Torrant. Suddenly, in that clear place left by his unfettered breath, there Torrant was….


  On a riverbank, stretched out naked on his cloak in the sun, after that one perfect moment of making love to Eljean and showing him that the pain was worth it.

  Torrant, Eljean chanted in that holy place, Torrant, I should have known you then….

  Don’t worry about it. Eljean saw the young, handsome face, the devastating smile that curled the upper lip and pulled back the grooves in his mouth. He saw the hazel eyes and their kindness and their warmth. I forgive you for being confused. I forgot my own name myself sometimes.

  But you’re not him, Eljean begged. He died; you’re still breathing. That’s a gift, you know.

  Oh Goddess, those eyes could be so serious sometimes! Even from his cell, as his body was being annihilated one pain center at a time, Eljean felt the stroke on his cheek and the forgiveness that was always a part of the man he’d loved most in the world.

  Gifts have to be earned came the sober reply, and Eljean was surprised to find suddenly that he was the wise one.

  One last touch, one last chance to rub his thumb in the divot in the chin, to stroke the bright white lock that tumbled over the anxious brow. Of course they don’t have to be earned, he said, giving his lover his best and brightest smile. That’s why they’re gifts!

  And then another voice spoke to both of them, a female voice, one Eljean had never heard before. Oh, I like this one, boyo. I like him a lot. I’d be happy to make our journey in his company.

  Torrant was no longer naked and—to his relief—neither was Eljean. Torrant ran to the woman, a tallish, plumpish, motherly sort of woman with freckles, bright russet curls, and a smile that made all the world as bright and as sunny a place as this riverbank on a perfect day.

  Auntie Beth… oh, I’m so sorry. I should be there. I failed so badly, Aunt Beth…. I needed you so very much.

  Eljean watched, amazed, as Torrant set down his burdens on the shoulders of this stout, imperfect woman who rubbed his back like she would a toddler’s and kissed his cheek the same way.